St. Peter Church on New Britain’s Franklin Square is structurally unsound and set to be demolished this year, but a group of parishioners wants the diocese to preserve the historic house of worship.
St. Peter Church has stood on Franklin Square for 125 years, but now the historic church is set for demolition after the church says it sustained structural damage after an earthquake in New Jersey in 2024.
“As soon as we recognized the damage, we stopped using the building to ensure the safety of all the people involved,” said Rev. Michael Casey. “It was determined that the church has lost over 33% of its load bearing capacity, which means in order to fix it would have to be brought up to 2025 seismic code.”
He says that could cost the church millions of dollars and that the church hasn’t held Sunday mass in about three years because of a merger. The building has been used for funerals, Ash Wednesday, and other events.
“We don’t have those kind of resources,” he said. “If we did have them we’d want to put them at the service of the people.”
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As a lifelong parishioner of the church, Dennis Kern says he doesn’t want to see the church demolished.
“It’s important to me because it’s the church I grew up in,” said Kern. “It’s the church that I had my children baptized in and I was married in.”
Kern showed NBC Connecticut several letters where he’s reached out to officials from the City of New Britain about the building. He says parishioners want a second opinion and want the church to be looked at by another engineering firm.
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The city said it responded to one of the letters and provided NBC Connecticut with a copy. The letter states that the city does not own the property and concerns should be addressed to the church.
“They don’t want to participate in this,” he said. “I think that because it’s an historical structure they should have some interest in the matter.”
NBC Connecticut reached out to the city and the Historic Preservation Commission, which runs through the city, neither would comment on the story.
